Cursive curriculum allowed to fade away

Thursday

Jan 3, 2013 at 2:00 AM

The news that instruction in cursive is no longer a part of the required curriculum in New York will strike some as sad. They will mourn the loss of another standard, another chance for schools to instill the discipline that came from staying within those dashed and solid lines.

Ken Hall

The news that instruction in cursive is no longer a part of the required curriculum in New York will strike some as sad. They will mourn the loss of another standard, another chance for schools to instill the discipline that came from staying within those dashed and solid lines.

While there is nothing prohibiting a teacher from devoting time to the correct formation of letters and the accepted ways to link them, the state's new common core requirements dwell exclusively on what students communicate and not how they do it. The standards assume that students might use any and all forms of communication, including the non-verbal, the spoken and the typed depending on grade level.

Cursive was not so much banished by official action as allowed to fade away by official neglect, to become the choice you might make should you have the skills and patience. With so much to teach and so little time to teach it, schools and teachers would have to give up something to make way for the class time and lengthy practice sessions that meaningful cursive instruction requires if students are going to master this art.

I might have been tempted to lead a crusade to resurrect the Palmer Method had I not recently sorted through a box of letters between my grandmother and her mother from the 1920s. They were the early 20th century equivalent of tweets, brief notes about the weather, the health of family members, plans to visit and acknowledgments of gifts. They were the kinds of communication eventually replaced by phone calls, then emails and now texts.

Oh, and they were often indecipherable. I'm sure that my grandmother and her mother spent long hours practicing their handwriting, forming those elaborate consonants with the appropriate loops, dutifully dotting each i and crossing each t. Yet despite all that time and all the practice they had jotting down their thoughts, they were not able to put words on paper that succeeding generations could read.

I also am lucky enough to have some diaries kept by my great-great-great (I might have missed one) grandfather when he was a young man in New York City in 1855. They contain a fascinating mix, the routine of daily life, glimpses into the culture of a bygone era and lots of other stuff I can't make out. Combine these examples with my scrawls and I'm tempted to conclude that good handwriting is an inherited trait.

Those with more artistic genes can find comfort in the transformation of good handwriting from a chore to an art with an emphasis on such skills as calligraphy and a group looking for members, the International Association of Master Penmen, Engravers and Teachers of Handwriting.

I hesitate to say that this is a struggling organization, but as a veteran of journalism groups that held conventions in the off-season to save money, I couldn't help but notice that the next IAMPETH convention will be July 8 to 13 in Albuquerque.

thrkenhall@gmail.com

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